SimtoLink: Remote water meters use a monthly data bundle

Data billing is a financial-accounting capability. It supports plan billing (monthly, quarterly, and yearly packs), overage billing, data-pool billing, and other modes. Bills are generated by SIM, project, customer, agent, and time, reconciled with the carrier, and used for financial accounting. It complements settlement and revenue sharing (income distribution).

Billing modes

Plan billing is prepaid by monthly, quarterly, or yearly pack, and the fee is generated on the plan cycle. Overage is billed by volume after the plan is used up. Data-pool billing first charges the total usage in the pool, then allocates it to each SIM by rule.

Bills and reconciliation

Data billing generates bills by SIM, project, customer, agent, time, and other dimensions, supporting financial accounting and reconciliation with the carrier. It complements settlement and revenue sharing (income distribution): data billing accounts for cost and revenue, and settlement and revenue sharing distribute income to channels. The platform needs to support several billing-mode configurations for different business scenarios.

Billing engine and plan cycle

The data-billing engine usually takes SIM usage from the carrier or from a usage-collection system built by the platform, and calculates fees from the data plan, the plan cycle, and the overage rules. The plan fee is a fixed charge for the cycle, and the overage fee is the amount above the plan multiplied by the unit price. In a data-pool case, total usage in the pool is calculated first, then allocated to each SIM equally, by actual usage, or by weight. The result is written to the bill for carrier reconciliation, customer collection, and settlement and revenue sharing. Billing accuracy directly affects cost accounting and profit analysis, and it is a core financial-accounting capability of an IoT cloud platform.

Data billing generates fees on the plan cycle: a monthly pack by calendar month or 30 days, a quarterly pack by 90 days, and a yearly pack by 365 days. The billing cycle is tied to the activation date or the plan order date. The platform needs to summarize charges by agent, customer, project, and other dimensions for settlement and revenue sharing, bills, and electronic invoices. The billing engine needs billing mode (by data volume, by duration, or by data pool), overage rules, and pool-allocation rules, consistent with carrier mapping and plan packaging, so carrier reconciliation can trace the data and analyze differences.

Source: https://www.simtolink.com/support/cmp/traffic-billing.html